I’ve been doing kink in private for years, but in the past six months I finally broke out into the public kink scene and went to my first two play parties.

Play parties are events in public or private venues where people do BDSM in front of other people. Play parties may include sex, but they also might not. What’s nice about play parties is that people can share knowledge and toys with each other, discover new play partners, have observers to intervene if something goes wrong in a scene, and of course, there’s a certain exhibitionistic thrill to doing kink in front of other people that many BDSM practitioners enjoy.

As you might imagine, I was excited to attend these parties. But as my friend Lunas has written before, there are a lot of safety issues associated with kink communities in general and play parties in particular. So I was also apprehensive about whether I, as well as the other party guests, would feel safe and supported.

My experiences at these two parties were different in ways deep and complex enough to really get me thinking about what set them apart. Here is my perspective, as someone new to the public kink scene, on what was good about these parties, what could be improved, and how kink communities can make their parties fun and safe for everyone.

I’ve been masturbating to the idea of being tied-up for as long as I can remember. It’s literally my earliest memory.

I must have started as young as three years old. Time and time again, I would lie face-down grinding my crotch against a stuffed animal, thinking about being tied-up by a big scary cartoon bear that was about to cook me for dinner. I kid you not.

I can’t tell you how often someone has called me up and invited me to play because “we need you, we’re short on girls.” I can’t tell you how often people have assumed I’m only at a game because they thought I was dating a close male friend on my team. I’d love to feel valued as a player, but—Oh what’s that? I have a uterus? Great, let me hop on the field so you can adhere to league policy and let you give gender diversity lip service without you worrying about really being inclusive to women.

The story of FetLife’s lack of respect of consent, privacy, and personal autonomy is an important one for all kinky people to know. But it also represents a fascinating case study for anyone interested in privacy, transparency, and rape culture on the Internet.

2. 4 Reasons Why, Actually, You Cannot Touch My Hair

Dominique’s post from last June was inspired by the performance art exhibit pictured above (SPOILER ALERT: the women protesting next to them has sliiightly less welcoming signs). In it she responds to all the people who want to touch black women’s hair.

Like, why? Why do you want to touch my hair? I implore you to deeply ponder this every single time you are about to ask to touch a black woman’s hair. Do you think it’s mystical? Exotic? Are you trying to test and see if it will leave scratches on your fingers? If you think it’s beautiful by all means, please say that, but you don’t have to touch it while the words come out of your lips.

1. Modeling Consent

“Psst…Eric!… Try words!”

When she wrote it in September, she was a lowly guest poster, but Rebecca has since become one of DDP’s editors! (I’m just kidding about guest posters being “lowly”–they are awesome and you should become one.) In this post Rebecca shares a happy, sexy story featuring dancing, nudity, makeouts, and good use of consent:

But our dance connection was growing into the sexual realm. I felt it happening. The dance was over, but neither of us walked away– those chills were running all over my body, begging to grow wings. Our faces were close together, breath in sync and heavy– it was that perfect moment, the one they capture in all the movies. I knew it was coming. That classic, dreamy, first kiss. And then something truly miraculous happened.

Hey, it’s been a while since I last wrote about consent+kink on this blog! I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about it though, and here’s where I’ve come out. This post follows the four others linked to above, but also stands quite well on its own.

Go to any BDSM conference or event, and you’ll find lots of workshops on concrete, observable, and often flashy technical skills. Like how to do particular rope bondage techniques, how to use electrical devices in play, how to use a cane, how to do fire play, etc. You’ll probably also workshops on more mental things like planning a ‘scene,’ issues in age-play, on humiliation, etc. These are the sort of things that are accorded social status in kink circles.

But you know what you won’t find much of? How to own your own mistakes. How to mess up, take responsibility, and restore trust. How to better avoid violating consent, and what to do if or when it happens. How to hold each other accountable for our actions. These are the tools we aren’t teaching. And yet, in a community where one-third of all participants have experienced a consent violation, these are the tools we need most badly.

After a lot of writing and thinking and many hours of conversations over the summer,* I’ve come the the conclusion that fighting rape culture in BDSM communities requires changing how we communicate about mistakes. Yes, better discussions around errors won’t end abuse. But they are essential to removing the Social License to Operate that predators too often enjoy. Because when we normalize responsible practices and lower the cost of vulnerability, we then expose the behavior of abusers as aberrant, so they can no longer hide. And that’s how things start to change.

Content note: details of my sex life. If you don’t want to read that, especially if you are, say, related to me– please skip this one.

This post is in direct homage to Jaclyn Friedman’s My Sluthood, Myself. Please go read that, then come back. That discusses more nuanced emotional stuff that is pretty relevant to the “and how the hell did that end up happening?” of this post, but I don’t feel like going into that here. Except to say the DDP authors are a pretty excellent posse.

So. Gloves and sluttery.

In M. Lunas’s safer sex post, he went over a bunch of stuff, including the use of latex or nitrile gloves for safer sex. This is something I’d never done.

I mostly didn’t feel the need to, because I wasn’t sleeping with random people (yes, that’s a touch of residual sex-negativity on my part), and I thought I’d be seen as weird, and I thought it’d be awkward to ask people to use them, etc.

Spoiler alert: I slept with some truly random people (where did I find them?), we used gloves (why?/how do you get somebody to do that?), and I found it to be not at all a big deal, except for the part where it was really hot.Continue reading →

This is the fourth post in a series on abuse in BDSM communities. While topically linked, each post does stand on its own. Please refer to our glossary for definitions of a number of key BDSM terms.

As I have been writing about, kink communities have a lot of problems with abuse, and a culture that has mirrored, rather than rejected, mainstream rape culture. So what can we do? Making kink communities safer starts, in part, with making our spaces safer. Over the years of attending and hosting parties, and talking with other consent activists and friends, I’ve developed a number of theories about how to make play parties better and safer. So last week, I decided to put all those ideas into practice in a very intentional way when my group house threw a play party. In this post, I’m going to talk about what we did, why we did it, how it turned out, and what we want to do differently next time.

I think there are lessons from this post are applicable to people who aren’t kinksters, too! Lots of spaces have problem with boundary violations. Dance scenes, for example. And while many details differ, I think some of techniques may be applicable (such as posting rules on the wall, and clearly designating support people).

Content Note : This series discuses rape and rape culture in kink communities. This is the third post in a series on abuse in BDSM communities. While topically linked, each post does stand on its own. Perhaps especially this one. Please refer to our glossary for definitions of a number of key BDSM terms.

This post is all about FetLife.com, aka Facebook for kinky people, and how and why it stands against efforts to address safety and abuse in BDSM communities. The story of FetLife’s lack of respect of consent, privacy, and personal autonomy is an important one for all kinky people to know. But it also represents a fascinating case study for anyone interested in privacy, transparency, and rape culture on the Internet. However, while there are many articles talking about various parts of this problem, these discussions have been scattered and often assume a lot of prior knowledge. Moreover, the common threads of FetLife’s various problematic policies haven’t always been explicit. So in this post I’ve tried to weave these disperate threads together into one (obsessively hyperlinked) article. I will also level some new accusations at FetLife that, as far as I know, have not been voiced before.

Content Note: This post focuses on rape and rape culture, especially in kink communities. Please refer to our glossary for definitions of a number of key BDSM terms.

Last week, I began this series by describing my own history and love affair with kink and enthusiastic consent. As I wrote–and I’m sure I’ll talk about again–BDSM communities have developed numerous elaborate tools for negotiating boundaries and consent–tools that have gone on to influence more mainstream perpectives on consent as well. It is also true that the community is full of radical allies who care deeply about consent and do their best to honor it. So this is awesome! But it can create a false sense of security, and blind us to the reality that BDSM communities actually have a big problem.

[Edit: For those who have been following debates on abuse in the kink scene over the last 18 months, some of this post may be review, but I hope you’ll find some new material; we’ll dive into original material in earnest in the next parts. For everyone else, I hope it is eye opening—but not paralyzing, for there is much work to be done.]

Additionally, 30.1% of respondents indicated that they had a pre-negotiated limit violated and 14.9% had experienced having a safe word or safe sign ignored. The aggregate total is 33%: 1 in 3 kinky people have experienced a consent violation, further emphasizing the need for greater education.